It’s been less than 12 hours but I can barely remember anything about the hike today before lunch time – it was that boring. Looking back at the guide I can recall passing under I-66 and having a little bit of a climb up from there. Mostly though, this part of Virginia is unexciting. Much of the forest here is covered in dense shrubbery and vines; it’s like walking through a tunnel with walls of plants. The best part of the day came moments after I was thinking about how nice a change of scenery would be. Virginia’s Sky Meadows State Park provided a fleeting glimmer of beauty reminiscent of Roan or Grayson. Huge grassy swaths of meadow bathed in sunlight sprawled out along the trail sprinkled only sparingly with towering trees. The trail was smooth and either gently downhill or flat throughout the whole park. Unfortunately it was a tiny section of the day, before I knew it I was crossing over another highway and back into the standard Virginia landscape.
Had another trail magic encounter though, and a very favorable one at that. A week or two ago Wilderness said the perfect trail magic would be ice cold gatorade at the top of a climb. Well, that’s exactly what I found today, and it was accompanied by fresh bananas and snickers bars. Everything was in a little cooler near Signal Knob, not far from where I stopped for lunch. Cold drink up on a hill during a hot and humid day definitely hit the spot.
We seem to have escaped the crew from last night’s shelter. For the first time there’s more sobos than nobos in fact. They’re all just section hiking though, this section between Harper’s Ferry and Waynesboro (through SNP) is quite a popular section. I think it will be thinning out quite a bit after Harper’s Ferry – less section hikers, and quite a few nobos are planning on flipflopping or yellowblazing so they will be heading north to get back on the trail.